Vogue has spoken: chic is dead. Not being it, but the word. Chic has, Lauren O’Neill argues, lost its essence, co-opted to cover whatever glazed-doughnut-skinned influencers on TikTok decide it should, from monogrammed lip balm to iced matchas. “Chic has come to be mistaken for certain monied strains of taste, rather than the sort of unique je ne sais quoi that I think the word at its purest actually means.”
Baudelaire – the 19th century’s Nicky Haslam, given how many things he disapproved of: photography, Belgium, Victor Hugo – would have agreed. He called chic an “awful and bizarre word”. Are he and Vogue right?
